New Course Emphasizes Objects

A 100-year-old Mexican corn tortilla, a 19th century American painter’s palette, and a stuffed Bengal tiger will count among objects undergraduates will study in a new General Education course University Professor Laurel T. Ulrich will teach this spring.

“Instead of a pile of reading, we’ve got a pile of stuff,” Ulrich said, adding that she expects the course to attract students with “a strong interest in working with objects.”

The exhibition, “Making a World”, will open in the Science Center for the duration of the new Gen Ed course, “Tangible Things: Harvard Collections in World History,” to be taught by Ulrich and Ivan Gaskell, a former curator of paintings at the Fogg Museum.

“Making a World” will feature projects by students enrolled in History 84c, a seminar on interdisciplinary perspectives on objects in North America that the two are teaching this semester.

Gaskell and the exhibition’s project manager, Sarah A. Carter ’02, said they will select objects they believe tell interesting stories as well as mystery objects—items the students will attempt to identify and contextualize within Harvard’s museum collections.

“We hope that people will feel encouraged to discover the corners of Harvard and Harvard’s relation to the world,” Gaskell said, adding that Harvard’s various collections are often “under-utilized” as an “amazing resource for teaching.”

Ulrich said an object’s origin and its relation to the rest of the collection will shed light on how students understand history in the new course.

Kristen A. Keerma, a teaching fellow for History 84c, said she thinks “Making a World” is “both a playful and provocative move in a new direction” for students interested in museum studies.

Katherine A. O’Leary ’11, a History 84c student working on the exhibition, agreed, stating that she sees material objects as “a chance to study a primary source.”